The Google Translate Android app has been gradually getting better and better. In addition to straight-up translations it also includes a conversation mode, handwriting recognition, voice dictation, and most recently character recognition, or OCR. If you’re learning Chinese then you’ve most likely already heard of Hanping Chinese Camera and Pleco OCR, both provide very good text recognition implementations, but how does this free offering from Google stack up?
To access the OCR functionality in Google Translate first launch the app, then select the target language at the top right of the screen followed by pressing the camera button located at the bottom right. The bottom half of the screen will turn into a camera window. It’s not necessary to select the source language as this will be auto-detected, but if you’ll also be typing during your translating session then it couldn’t hurt.
Position the camera over some Chinese text then press the camera button at the bottom. The photo will be captured and after a few moments characters should become grouped together into words by a light grey background. To translate a word use your finger to highlight it, if it’s recognised then the translation will be displayed above the camera window. Press the arrow to the right of the translated word to view a more detailed definition along with the Pinyin.
The flaws for using this as a serious study tool become apparent almost immediately, most notably that the phonetics for the currently selected word aren’t displayed anywhere except the full dictionary entry which requires clicking out of OCR mode. After you move from OCR mode to the dictionary, there’s no way to get back to your already captured image and it’s lost forever. Of course you could just capture it again, but that’s hardly ideal if you want the Pinyin for more than a few words. Text recognition is also only available for horizontally aligned text, ruling out the use of this tool for a large portion of Chinese language books.
Regardless of any lacking features, there’s no arguing that for free this is a great tool. Even if you’ve already invested in Hanping Chinese Camera or Pleco OCR then it’s still worth having around. As it’s a Google app the text recognition engine is most likely being constantly updated (captured images are sent to Google for processing) which means it’ll keep getting better. Interestingly, while testing I did run into a few words that used slightly non-standard or modified fonts (usually on the covers of books) that Google Translate handled quickly but that took a lot of fine tuning in the other apps.
Google Translate is available for free from Google Play.
Translate between up to 133 languages. Feature support varies by language:
• Text: Translate between languages by typing
• Offline: Translate with no Internet connection
• Instant camera translation: Translate text in images instantly by just pointing your camera
• Photos: Translate text in taken or imported photos
• Conversations: Translate bilingual conversations on the fly
• Handwriting: Draw text characters instead of typing
•
Phrasebook: Star and save translated words and phrases for future reference
Permissions notice:
• Microphone for speech translation
• Camera for translating text via the camera
• Photos for importing photos from your library
Translations between the following languages are supported:
Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bambara, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Cebuano, Chichewa, Chinese
(Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dhivehi, Dogri, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Guarani, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Konkani, Korean, Krio, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Kurdish (Sorani), Kyrgyz, Lao, Latin, Latvian,
Lingala, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Maithili, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Maori, Marathi, Meiteilon (Manipuri), Mizo, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Odia (Oriya), Oromo, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Quechua, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Sanskrit, Scots Gaelic, Sepedi, Serbian, Sesotho, Shona, Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Tigrinya, Tsonga, Turkish, Turkmen, Twi,
Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zulu
What’s New
• Several bug fixes and usability improvements
Ratings and Reviews
4.1 out of 5
1.8K Ratings
Please restore the previous version !
It is definitely a very effective and versatile app. As I study Chinese, the option between direct translation thru photography and the pinyin transcription and traduction was definitely helpful for language learning. But this has disappeared as only the photography translation looks available right now. Please give the users optionality ! Thanks
The removal of scan, pause translation and the send to home bug for image translation
The remove of the feature to select words yourself from photos has been removed along with and google lens when select the option to send text to home it sends the already translated text so it makes the transition basically useless as it double translate the text and the meaning changes a lot.
Example: when translating from an uploaded screenshot “お嬢大好き!”(I love you Milady) it translates it to “I love you girl!” Then when you select send that to home is becomes “私はあなたの女の子を愛しています!” As it sends the already translated text back thought the translation algorithm. So the App is objectively worse than version 6.35.0 as the removal of scan and pause translation is a horrible decision especially to those that are trying to learn the language as you can’t just pick out individual or small groups of words to translate from an image of a document anymore. The current version is 6.45.1 , i am thankful have another device that’s older with the previous version than is objectively superior in function. Live translation is a gimmick and the software isn’t good unless you have a Basic understanding of the other language since the content and context in a language lien Japanese is important so it’s impossible to make a perfect translation software for anything other than the literal word meaning.
New Lens Update
The previous version of Google Translate used to be so good (old camera function) but the introduction of Google Lens instead of the old Google translate instant translator has ruined the experience for me! The new google lens does not have a scan function, it’s difficult to translate large chunks of text accurately and it only seems to translate each line as it is, and does not relate it with the next line, so the translation ends up not making sence! The only good thing that Google Lens has brought up is an instant translator option for more languages.
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Information
Provider
Google LLCSize
123.6 MBCategory
ReferenceCompatibility iPhone Requires iOS 14.0 or later. iPad Requires iPadOS 14.0 or later. iPod touch Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
Languages
English, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Cambodian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Laotian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian Bokmål, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Singhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh
Age Rating
4+Copyright
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